Defense rests: How O’Shaquie Foster found out the hard way that boxing judging isn’t what it seems

The frustrating guesswork was removed from figuring out how to approach the championship rounds when O’Shaquie Foster fought Eduardo “Rocky” Hernandez a year ago in Cancun.

Due to the event’s rarely-seen use of open scoring, Foster knew he was down on two scorecards through 10 rounds of their 12-round fight for Foster’s WBC super featherweight title. Canadian judge Ed Pearson had Hernandez ahead 97-93, whereas Venezuelan judge Nicolas Hidalgo rather ridiculously had it a shutout for the challenger, 100-90. Argentinean judge Jorge Gorini scored it for Foster entering the 11th round, 96-93.

That overall unfavorable math made Foster fight more aggressively because the American champion knew he needed to knock out Mexico City’s Hernandez to successfully defend the WBC 130-pound crown he won in his previous bout.

A fiercer Foster rocked Hernandez early in the 11th round and overcame Hernandez’s hard shots later in the 11th round. Foster then dropped the gutsy challenger twice in the 12th round, leading referee Hector Afu to step between them to stop their bout with 22 seconds left on the clock.

“It was just one of them things like, ‘You gotta catch him or you gonna lose,’” Foster told Uncrowned. “That’s all I kept telling myself, ‘You gonna lose. You gotta catch him. Land something big.’”

A thankful Foster feels open scoring, which is very seldom used in the United States, changed his game plan and enabled the Texas native to retain his title in October 2023. Foster’s fantastic comeback also led to him signing a multi-fight promotional agreement with Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc.

“I think it’s beneficial,” Foster said of open scoring. “It helped us out a lot in Cancun, because we thought we would have been winning that fight.”

Foster wasn’t nearly as fortunate the night of July 6 in Newark, New Jersey.

An overconfident Foster figured he was comfortably beating Brazilian contender Robson Conceicao as they approached the championship rounds on the Shakur Stevenson vs. Artem Harutyunyan undercard at Prudential Center. Foster fought as if he were way ahead on the cards, but then lost a split decision and his WBC belt because two judges — New York’s Tony Lundy (116-112) and Maryland’s Paul Wallace (115-113) — respectively scored eight and seven rounds for Conceicao.

The third judge, New York’s Ron McNair, scored eight rounds for Foster, who won 116-112 on McNair’s card.

ESPN on-air analyst Mark Kriegel, who helped call the action from ringside, credited Conceicao for winning only one round. Kriegel felt Foster won 119-109 and was very critical of Lundy and Wallace after the decision was announced.

In hindsight, Foster (22-3, 12 KOs) wishes he had thrown more punches to make his perceived victory clearer. He still feels he deserved to beat Conceicao (19-2-1, 9 KOs) by big margins on all three cards.

“I gave him two rounds,” Foster said, “but that’s the most I could give him.”

Foster, a boxer-puncher known as one of boxing’s most effective defensive fighters, impressively made Conceicao miss, unofficially at least, nearly 90 percent of his punches, according to CompuBox (76-of-701; 11%). CompuBox counted 109-of-435 connections for Foster, who landed 25% of his attempts overall.

The WBC ordered an immediate rematch merely two weeks later. Conceicao, 36, and Foster, 31, are now set to square off again Saturday in a 12-round main event at Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York.

Though he is certain he will defeat Foster again, Conceicao, a 2016 Olympic gold medalist, doesn’t think he should have to fight Foster a second time.

“I think it was very fair,” Conceicao told Uncrowned of the scoring through his translator. “As a world champion, he should’ve just come either to fight and actually looked for the fight, instead of just jabbing every now and again, weaving, going around. I don’t really think that was an approach of a world champion. So, [the decision] was more than fair.”

Open scoring wasn’t available to Foster and Conceicao because it isn’t permitted within the rules of New Jersey’s State Athletic Control Board.

“I feel like [open scoring is] cool,” Foster said, “because, I mean, you never know with the judges and what they’re liking these days.”

Does defense count how it did for Pep, Whitaker?

Foster found out only after questionably losing his title that he quite literally didn’t know how judges scored his loss to Conceicao, or most of his previous bouts. It wasn’t until this interview with Uncrowned that Foster learned defense has not been a point of emphasis during judging seminars conducted in recent years by the WBC and American regulatory agencies affiliated with the Association of Boxing Commissions.

Retired Nevada-based judge Duane Ford, who worked countless championship bouts from 1978-2013, is the chairman of the WBC’s ring officials committee. Ford directs seminars for the WBC, which approved the judges for Foster-Conceicao.

“We’ve never discounted defense, but there have been some instructors who teach defense as one of the scoring criteria,” Ford told Uncrowned. “Defense is not within the scoring criteria. The scoring criteria is effective punching, effective aggression, and ring generalship. Ring generalship is interpreted as control. Defense falls within that category.

“In order to win, you’ve gotta score punches. You’ve gotta do something to score. On defense, you can sit there and dodge every punch, but you wouldn’t win the round. The other guy might win on aggression.”

In other words, just to make the convoluted, subjective science of scoring boxing more mystifying, defense sort of still counts — just not as much as fans, broadcasters, reporters, managers, promoters, trainers, and most importantly, the fighters themselves tend to expect. That was news to a flabbergasted Foster, who felt defense was one of the primary reasons he should’ve outpointed Conceicao comfortably.

“From my understanding, it’s who controlled the pace, controlled the round, you know, showing defense, showing offense, just controlling the overall fight,” Foster said. “That’s how I look at it. It ain’t really who land more punches. We done seen how that come out at the end of fights before, CompuBox and stuff like that.

“I think it’s about who controlling the round and, you know, making the adjustments. I know defense and all that is scoring. Defense counts the same as getting punched in the face. It’s supposed to be [that way].”

But those won’t be the principles applied by the three judges who will score Saturday’s rematch between Conceicao and Foster: California’s Max De Luca, New York’s Eric Marlinski, and New York’s Tom Schreck.

“You just put me on to something, because I didn’t know that,” Foster said.

“That’s crazy! You can’t eliminate defense. That’s crazy! I’m not gonna lie, that’s the first time I’ve heard this. I’m definitely gonna keep that in mind, because I love defense, man. I love to hit somebody and they can’t hit me back. Now that I know that, I can approach it a little different than what I did the last fight. Because if I would’ve known that, offense would’ve been off the defense a lot more.”

Conceicao, conversely, confirmed that he won’t make any adjustments to how he fights Foster again based on the same scoring information passed along to him by Uncrowned.

Foster’s team, meanwhile, tried to take a more proactive approach to assessing the judging pool for their rematch. A team typically can have a suggested judge removed from consideration if they provide valid rationale to a commission.

Uncrowned has confirmed, though, that there weren’t any judges excluded from the pool provided weeks in advance of this rematch by the Oneida Indian Nation Athletic Commission, Turning Stone’s regulatory agency.

“Our team put a hell of a lot of work into [judge selection], specifically going into this fight,” Mills said. “And what we’re looking for, honestly, is just a fair playing field. We’re not looking for any advantages. We’d like to know how the fight is being scored. Because if anyone has followed Shaq’s career, Shaq can fight any way he wants to. He can do whatever he wants to do in the ring. Just let us know what that is, so he can just do his thing. We’re paying a lot more attention to that at this stage.”

Foster’s focus is to be a more offensive fighter Saturday night, so that he can regain his title and move back into position to secure a 130-pound championship unification fight sometime early in 2025. He has withstood worse than his loss to Conceicao — most notably a four-month incarceration in 2017 on an aggravated assault conviction — yet Foster feels the need to redeem himself again.

“Going through the trials and the tribulations I went through,” Foster said, “and then to win the title and get it snatched from me like that, it’s just all gonna feel good when I get it back. It’s gonna feel great. I’m excited. I can’t wait to go out there and show the world how talented I am, as far as doing different things. I showed them I can box dude the first fight. You know, we gonna bring something different out this time.”